


Not strength to hold

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [48]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alienages (Dragon Age), Dragon Age: Origins Quest - Unrest in the Alienage, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Papa Tabris is the best dad, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-12 04:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20979206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Caitwyn Tabris found her father in a cage.  She could manage to unlock it right?  If her hands would stop shaking.Note:This series is fully drafted!  No danger of an unfinished series.  Sorry if this was posted at a funny time, though, as I'm travelling.  Much love for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting.  <3





	Not strength to hold

Lock picks in hand, Caitwyn raced to the cage. The blood mage lay dying on the stone floor, but she turned a deaf ear to his pleading. Let him have all the blood he could handle; his own blood ran in the channels between the stones, sank into the mortar, bubbled up in his throat around the head of her arrow. He could not cast if he could not speak.

She had not given him a single chance.

Her hands had been steady on her bow. Knock, draw, loose. Knock, draw, loose. Smooth, fluid, practiced. Her fingers trembled as she prodded the lock. The heavy metal gleamed in the torchlight of the basement room turned slaver’s den. She threaded the pin, but it slipped out of the keyhole. Threaded again, but she couldn’t make it go past the second tumbler.

Impossible. She had picked locks more difficult than this when she’d been a child.

Once more, she could do this. Someone called her name. Distant, dim, and then a pale, weathered and scarred hand reached through the bars of the cage and closed around her wrist. “Firebug.”

Caitwyn met her father’s eyes. Green, same as hers, sunken in a too-lean face with more wrinkles than she remembered. Since the last she had seen him, since last year’s Summerday. When she should have been married and lived in a house the next alley over. The fine lines of his face collapsed, and he gasped a heaving, sucking breath. His other hand shot out and grabbed her free hand. Calloused fingers dug into her archer’s gloves.

“Oh,” he breathed, “my little firebug.” 

No tears. Tears would blur her vision, and then she wouldn’t be able to pick the lock. The lock on the cage that held her father. 

“Papa.” Her voice cracked like brittle ice. She cleared her throat. “Papa, I have to pick the lock, you, you need to let me go.”

“You were  _ dead _ , Firebug.” Wetness wove through his words. A lung infection? Something in his throat? Even in early summer, basements like this were damp and prone to mold. His hands were like manacles around her wrists. Bound to this place, this time, she couldn't escape. There was no escaping what she had left behind. Twice.

Raised to say the words people wanted to hear, nothing left Caitwyn’s lips. It all caught in her own throat, jagged and cold, like an icicle reaching toward the ground, freezing everything in its path. Then he  _ smiled _ . Smiled with tears in his eyes, running down his face, dripping off his chin. 

“I should have known,” he half sobbed, “You’re so bright, so clever. I should have known you would come home.”

The lockpicks fell to the stone floor with a soft  _ ting _ , and she gripped her father by his bony and stooped shoulders. He was too thin, too worn. He had grieved for her, and it had spread him thin against the world. A worried huff brushed passed her cheek. “Maker’s mercy, you’re naught but skin and bones, Firebug!”

“Papa.” The icicles in her throat cracked and splintered. Her vision swam. The bars of the cage were clamy against her skin. The line between crying and laughing was thinner than a breath, the distance between joy and sorrow collapsible into nothing. “I’m sorry, so sorry.” 

“Hush now,” he told her, like she was a child again. Their cheeks pressed together in the spaces between the bars, and he patted her shorn hair as he had when she was small. “You’re home, Firebug, you’re home. My little girl’s come back home.”

She bit the inside of her cheek and squeezed her eyes shut tight, and for a small while let herself believe that she was that little girl again.


End file.
